Tafraoute

After leaving Assa for Guelmin and carrying on to Tafraoute, I got my first puncture 25kms into a rocky isolated ride. I've never changed a motorcycle puncture before. I've read how to do it (it's a lot tougher than changing a bicycle puncture!) but have never done it myself.

The first problem was raising the bike to remove the front wheel. After a number of attempts to manhandle the bike I managed to stack it on a pile of flat rocks and support it either side with the metal panniers. The sun was beating down- it was midday - so I had to cover my head, remove my jackets and get to work. Two hours later I had successfuly finished the job and learned a few lessons in the process. During this time I saw only 2 other vehicles, including French tourists in a hired Jeep who stopped to offer me water.

I made it to Tafroute dirty, exhausted and sunburned on my forearms from the desert tyre change. I pulled in at the first hotel/cafe to check out the rooms, parking next to a British registered Honda 125 from 1985. Surely not a tourist. It must be a local who had 'acquired' it somehow. After only a few minutes Henry appeared and introduced himself. He was iindeed the proud owner and rider of the classic Honda outside. My jaw dropped. Credit to the guy. Slick slim road tyres and 10.5hp engine, he had bought it for 80 quid in the TradeIt, got it MOT's and set out on L-plates for the Moroccan outback. And why not? It proved nimble enough, even through the rocky dry river beds of the local gorges. It was just a bit slow, but he wasn't in a rush. So I took a leaf out of his book and decided to spend two days in one place (for the first time in the trip) and do some gentle touring with him. Leafy palmeries, gorge rides and a few middle peaks of the High Atlas made for a welcomed variation in the desert trails which had consumed me for the past few days.

The land became noticeably greener, though still very dry, and farming became slightly more organised. It was obviously ploughing season as everywhere we went we saw lone donkeys being driven mercilessly in the fields, dragging just one tilling hook, labouriously churning the land for whatever meagre crops could be grown here. Some places were being irrigated by ingenious systems of apparently ad-hoc pipes. Apart from this, we could easily have been in a biblical back drop of subsistance farming which has not changed in millennia.

The $5 per night hotel was the epitomy of 'you get what you pay for' but that is part of the experience (some would disagree of course!). It was the beginning of a phase of extremes. The next night I tried to push on north, aiming to ride in the dark. Night fell and it got hairy pretty quickly, although nothing like the near-certain-death-experience of riding in India at night, there were too many road-safety alarm bells ringing in my head so I looked for the nearest decent hotel which turned out to be a luxury riad centred around its own orangery. Pretty, comfortable and a welcome change from the days before. Little did I know that the next night would be a world of difference.